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Am I the only one who think that all is already written and that the league more-or-less is in the driver seat from day one? We have a select group of 30 or so owners that weigh billions of dollars in large sports/media/cinema/industrial/bourse/whatever financial pie. They only accept others billonnaires in their private circle of guys who bought themselves an hockey club to play with adult toys and try a shot at the Cup. The game is expansing like never before, and with the yearly arrival of millions of new fans and the rising of cocooning and home-theater genre, they have in hand a league worth more than a trip to Mars.

Yet there is people who thought that the NHl is killing itself, that the fans are angry, that the league will never recover from a three (3) month absence. That's non-sense. Here a season-ticket for the habs is a list and you'll be lucky to get one in one or two years; there's 5500 people on that list. The same people are arguing that little markets are bleeding money. That's a joke. These mega-billionnaires have succeeded in the impossible task to look poor and loosing-money guys. Some franchises are only there to gather a 300 000 000 $ entry cost and to negotiate publicity contracts and potential viewers based on geographical dispersion. After that some people are arguing that because no one go see a Dallas stars game the NHL is doomed. It's loosing the picture.

The NHL will pay a beer to each fan and in three years that business will be worth 4-5-6 billions, and only rising. There is no poor in that story; when you have the possibility to go see an NHl game, you're pretty mutch on top of the world.

More tidbits:
"Ability for Clubs to retain/allocate Salary and Cap Charges in the context of Player Trades within specified parameters. "
--Interesting - teams will now be allowed to deal cap space. Expect to see high-end teams do this to cheat the cap.

"Implementation of a weighted Draft Lottery in which all non-Playoff teams compete for opportunity to choose first overall in the annual Draft."
--Gets rid of tanking.

"6. Creation of “interview period” for Unrestricted Free Agents."
--I like this one. Works in the NFL.

I think the NHL realizes that this will not end well if the whole season is lost. Remember back in October when Bettman made this absurd comment;

"The fans will always come back, they always do, because we have the best fans".

Now firstly, he should not have included himself in the "Collective We". That did him no favours in the eyes of the fans.

Secondly, the assumption that "they always come back" is not proving to be so the longer this thing goes on.

I don't know how many of you saw the deluge of irate fans when the NHL.com posted it's Season's Greetings message on Facebook. They were bombarded in the first 5 hours with over 5,000 messages of ill will, and how dare the NHL do such a frivolous thing as to placate their fans, thinking that it was a nice gesture by the NHL head office.

I think Bettman now sees that perhaps the fans won't come back as this last Facebook backlash has taken the NHL completely by surprise.

Remember this... NHL fans have been watching this game and it's treatment to players by the owners before Gary Bettman ever knew what Hockey was. Older fans like myself watched guys play for $40.00 and $50.00 per game while the owners got rich.

Rich NHL Players are a relatively new phenomenon in terms of the 100 year history of pro hockey in North America. For Bettman to assume that every fan is on the side of the owners is a huge farce at best. Had he have been raised a Hockey Guy like many of us are and continue to be, he would see the error in his assumption and his judgement.

About that NHL.com thing - it's been happening with a lot of the teams when they do postings as well. A couple weeks ago the Habs feed posted a marketing thing to entice people to sign up for the fan club and people just ripped them. Not at all interested in that sort of thing.

This does look like a last ditch effort and boy do I hope it works.we can pretend we don't care that much and that we wont go back when they finally play but lord knows I will! I miss hockey so much its unreal....there should be a law against hockeyless saturday nights it's just wrong and i've had enough! I need my Habs! Get a deal done already and let's play!